Set the World on Fire: Black Nationalist Women and the Global Struggle for Freedom

Black nationalist women such as Mittie Maude Lena Gordon, Celia Jane Allen, Amy Jacques Garvey, and others organized and participated in political movements from the early twentieth century to the 1960s. Keisha N. Blain's book, "Set the World on Fire," examines how these women built alliances with people of color around the globe, advocated for black rights and liberation, and employed various protest strategies and tactics. The book highlights the flexibility, adaptability, and experimentation of black women leaders who demanded equal recognition and participation in global civil society.

\n Format: Hardback
\n Length: 264 pages
\n Publication date: 15 March 2018
\n Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
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In 1932, Mittie Maude Lena Gordon addressed a gathering of black Chicagoans at the historic Jack Johnson boxing ring, galvanizing their support for emigration to West Africa. In 1937, Celia Jane Allen ventured to Jim Crow Mississippi to organize rural black workers around black nationalist causes. In the late 1940s, from her home in Kingston, Jamaica, Amy Jacques Garvey launched an extensive letter-writing campaign to defend the Greater Liberia Bill, which aimed to relocate 13 million black Americans to West Africa. Gordon, Allen, and Jacques Garvey, along with Maymie De Mena, Ethel Collins, Amy Ashwood, and Ethel Waddell, are part of an overlooked and understudied group of black women who take center stage in Keisha N. Blain's groundbreaking book, Set the World on Fire. Historians of the era often portray the period between the Garvey movement of the 1920s and the Black Power movement of the 1960s as one of declining black nationalist activism. However, Blain reimagines the Great Depression, World War II, and the early Cold War as significant eras of black nationalist, particularly black nationalist women's, ferment. These women, hailing from Chicago, Harlem, and the Mississippi Delta, established alliances with people of color across the globe, advocating for the rights and liberation of black people in the United States and throughout the African diaspora. As pragmatic activists, they employed a diverse range of protest strategies and tactics, drawing from various religious and political ideologies, and forming unexpected alliances in their pursuit of freedom. Set the World on Fire relies on a wealth of previously untapped sources, including newspapers, government records, songs, and poetry, to shed light on the remarkable stories of these black nationalist women and their contributions to the struggle for racial justice.

\n Weight: 560g\n
Dimension: 236 x 190 x 23 (mm)\n
ISBN-13: 9780812249880\n \n